Sunday, September 10, 2006

An even better BitTorrent client for Linux!

Well, after all the problems with Transmission and popular trackers like OiNK and Demonoid I decided to try something else. I tried out Tribler, but it wasn't that good, so after snooping around the Ubuntu forums I found about this relatively new client called qBittorrent. At first I refused to use it, as I don't like running Qt apps under Gnome, but after searching some more, and not finding anything better I decided to go for it.

The client is way better than anything I've used before. It even has an inbuilt torrent search plugin, like the famous uTorrent on windows. It also has all the major features you may need/want from a mature client.

The good news is that it is actively developed, it has a very nice and fresh look, and there's official Ubuntu and Debian packages on the download page and last time I checked it was in the repositories. That's a lot to say, because we now have official support from the qBittorrent team when packages don't work, etc.

All in all, its the best client I've used so far. Try it out!

67 comments:

Anonymous said...

what's wrong with azureus?

Arturo said...

Well, I used to be an azureus fan, but this consumes way less memory, and I can achive the same speed. It's lighter and just works better for me IMO. :D

Anonymous said...

if you ok with running qt3 apps in gnome, then KTorrent (http://ktorrent.org/) is probably more worth your while. Grab the newest .deb from their site as the one in the repos is a bit outdated

Arturo said...

Well, I have not tried KTorrent yet, but I think qBittorrent suits my needs well. I will use it some more, and maybe I'll try KTorrent on the future. Currently, this is the only Qt app I'm running on Gnome.

Do you know if KTorrent needs more than KDE Base?

Thanks for the comment!

Anonymous said...

i agree that you should try ktorrent. i love azureus too, but i hate the fact that it consumes so much memory. i tried ktorrent and found that it provides all the features i need while consuming far less resources. i haven't looked back since

Arturo said...

What features does KTorrent have that qBittorrent doesn't?

Again, thanks for the post.

virens said...

For downoading bittorrent files I`m using qtorrent client in my Debian. It`s simple and fast, but not so pretty as qBittorrent...

Anonymous said...

Well, why don't you decide for yourself?! Install ktorrent and compare it's features to qBitorrent. Maybe you could write about it in your blog.

Anonymous said...

For Mac OS X, you can try BitRocket, it's got built in search capabilities and it's cocoa based.
It's quite fast.
Take a look for yourself!

Anonymous said...

Use TorrentFlux you insensitive mofos.

Anonymous said...

Well, I personally am very satisfied with rtorrent and libtorrent :)
terminalapps ftw!

Anonymous said...

If you are looking for a gtk based bittorrent client, I suggest you to try transmission (http://transmission.m0k.org/), it's very light and simple.

Anonymous said...

ktorrent is based on kdelibs and it is not a good idea to run it under gnome. It is much fater than azureus, but not as fast as qbittorrent, which is based on new qt4 libs and doesn't need kde at all. I remember using it one month ago, looked very imressive but number of bugs made it unuseble ;(

Arturo said...

Ok, lots of comments while I was sleeping. Didn't expect that.

Anyway, I may try KTorrent, but as the last person said, it uses kdelibs, which may be a problem under Gnome. But still, it'd be good to make the comparison and write about it. Great idea.

And, I want to try this qTorrent virens talked about, it looks quite simple and nice. I will give it a go sometime soon.

Also, I built a Transmission package for Ubuntu a while a go, and was happily using it, but I needed to use Demonoid, and because of the announce time bug in Transmission I refuse to use it until its fixed.

Thanks all for the comments, except for the guy that rudely incites us all to use TorrentFlux. He makes me laugh. :P

Good day all!

Arturo said...

Bobby's got a point. There are very good Qt/KDE apps out there. I myself love Kate, its very nice, but right now Gedit suits my needs well.

As I said, I don't mind too much running KDE/Qt stuff on my system. So sometime soon I'll try qTorrent and KTorrent.

Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

Personally I think that rtorrent is one of the best I've used. Then again I do have an ncurses fetish...

Anonymous said...

su
wine ./utorrent.exe

Done

Anonymous said...

I have use ktorrent for sometime, several things that seems neat for me:
* DHT
* scheduled speed limit
* ratio limit
* simple interface (compared to azureus)

Anyway you may want to check wiki comparison on bittorrent-client:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_software

Arturo said...

Ok, you convinced me, I'm going to try KTorrent. Will post a comparison soon, after using it for a while. It's in the repos, right?

And yeah, I used rTorrent for a while, it was really nice, but I'm not much of a CLI guy. :D

Thanks for the comments!

Anonymous said...

+1 for rtorrent

Anonymous said...

Later ktorrent finally made it into dapper-backports.

Anonymous said...

For the KDE haters (generally Gnome users), let me inform you that Mr. Torvalds (you might know him) endorses KDE.

Considering that the best desktop apps under Linux are qt/kde based that should tell you something.

Anonymous said...

Use utorrent under wine. You'll be stunned.

Anonymous said...

Bittornado is still better than this, i mean, its not that bad, just not asgood as it sounds is all

Anonymous said...

I use uTorrent in Ubuntu and it works really nice using the current wine.

Anonymous said...

I use uTorrent in Ubuntu and it works really nice using the current wine.

Arturo said...

I know Linus Torvalds likes KDE better than Gnome, but that doesn't mean we should. I like Gnome better than KDE. It's less cluttered, and I like my applications to be less toy-like in the sense that they look too plastic and kind of like candies. :P

Still, I'm giving KTorrent a go right now, and, well, I'm impressed. It's very fast, has DHT, encryption, and a a nice scan folder plugin that scans a given folder for .torrent files and adds them to your download list.

It's very nice. I want to do an in depth review about this nice app, but I want to test/use it some more before writing anything.

Thanks for the comments!

Anonymous said...

I have used azureus. Although its useful, its a memory hog. Then i've used wine+utorrent. Runs well, but looks ugly. I've used freeloader. Doesnt have a lot of features.

So i am currently using KTorrent. I dont mind trying out qBittorrent. Will post my opinion at: http://mytechieself.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

"Anyway, I may try KTorrent, but as the last person said, it uses kdelibs, which may be a problem under Gnome. "

Hardly, QT/GTK applications can run side by side. If this is the only KDE/QT app you're using, you're really missing out (amarok ffs!). Anyway azureus is the only torrent program that maxes my bandwidth and has some brilliant plugins like the rss feed reader. And since the last release we can now send torrents to friends :) Without a doubt, the most featured fastest torrent application, even if it is a bit hungry for RAM q:)

Anonymous said...

I rather use utorrent in wine.

Anonymous said...

I use azureus on Ubuntu, it does use a lot of resources, but has all the features I want! I might give uTorrent under wine a go.

If you do use bittorrent to download films check out www.flixflux.co.uk - a site I put together specifically for finding torrents of the latest releases.

Anonymous said...

Anything should be better than azureus. No need to install java is a big win in itself, but the program in itself is really horrible - waaaaaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much crap in all menus, when all you want is to download and share, and maybe tweak some ratios and see some stats.

The split view is a good idea though, But someone really should beat some usability, no a lot of usability into the authors.

Not to mention it's an absolute pig and keep crashing all the time.

Anonymous said...

I can't understand why any one would use a program made for windows when there are A LOT of them that make the same thing...but for linux!

Anonymous said...

I like both qTorrent and KTorrent, nice simple and slimmer than Azureus. I just couldn't find one feature - uPnP client. And that was a showstopper for me. I have a NAT-ed network and I don't want to use statically redirected ports, don't ask why, I just want uPnP.

Azureus is nice, only couple of minor (actually not so minor at all) shortcomings: it crashes sometimes and it sometimes even brings my xvncserver down with it. I don't know how it does it but opening some certain torrent files crashes Azureus and the xvncserver (Debian) with it! Under windows it was just unusable for (at least in my machine and with my settings) - the whole machine became really slow and network was completely out of any use even if Azureus just used 1/10th of the bandwith available.

But a question too: does anyone know another bittorrent client for Linux which supports also uPnP?

Anonymous said...

I like both qTorrent and KTorrent, nice simple and slimmer than Azureus. I just couldn't find one feature - uPnP client. And that was a showstopper for me. I have a NAT-ed network and I don't want to use statically redirected ports, don't ask why, I just want uPnP.

Azureus is nice, only couple of minor (actually not so minor at all) shortcomings: it crashes sometimes and it sometimes even brings my xvncserver down with it. I don't know how it does it but opening some certain torrent files crashes Azureus and the xvncserver (Debian) with it! Under windows it was just unusable for (at least in my machine and with my settings) - the whole machine became really slow and network was completely out of any use even if Azureus just used 1/10th of the bandwith available.

But a question too: does anyone know another bittorrent client for Linux which supports also uPnP?

Anonymous said...

I like both qTorrent and KTorrent, nice simple and slimmer than Azureus. I just couldn't find one feature - uPnP client. And that was a showstopper for me. I have a NAT-ed network and I don't want to use statically redirected ports, don't ask why, I just want uPnP.

Azureus is nice, only couple of minor (actually not so minor at all) shortcomings: it crashes sometimes and it sometimes even brings my xvncserver down with it. I don't know how it does it but opening some certain torrent files crashes Azureus and the xvncserver (Debian) with it! Under windows it was just unusable for (at least in my machine and with my settings) - the whole machine became really slow and network was completely out of any use even if Azureus just used 1/10th of the bandwith available.

But a question too: does anyone know another bittorrent client for Linux which supports also uPnP?

Anonymous said...

rtorrent++, but admittedly I'm a console junkie

Anonymous said...

DOWNLOADING Fsol?! No no no! They are too good to be downloaded, get out and buy there stuff! If you want to get free FSOL stuff then...

http://fsol.disenchanted.com/web/livelist.shtml

Arturo said...

Well, you might be amazed at this, but I do not have enough money to afford new records. I download them, but when I can I do buy the stuff I download.

Anonymous said...

I feel dirty typing this, but.. but...

UTORRENT W/WINE


God I Need A Drink

Anonymous said...

"But a question too: does anyone know another bittorrent client for Linux which supports also uPnP? 2:01 PM "

KTorrent supports uPnP you fool! And works perfectly for me. Grab the latest version, compile from source if you have to.

-Jeff

Sisteboss said...

The thing about clients like kTorrent and the default gnome torrent-client etc.. Is that you don't get the option window to select/deselect files when opening the torrent file. And THAT is something I don't understand how you can live without no matter how memoryefficient and nice programmed the client is. I now use Azureus because it's the only one I've found with this option except uTorrent with WINE ofc. Know of any other?

Arturo said...

Yeah, deluge has that feature too. Works very good, try it out!

http://zachtib.googlepages.com/deluge

Anonymous said...

David said...

The thing about clients like kTorrent and the default gnome torrent-client etc.. Is that you don't get the option window to select/deselect files when opening the torrent file.

Oh really? Then how do you explain the window that Ktorrent pops up everytime I download a multifile torrent asking which files I want to d/l?

Anonymous said...

Does anyone installed QBittorrent on a PPC machine?

Anonymous said...

Wow... thank you guys for all this discussion. On Ubuntu/Gnome I tried KTorrent, qBittorrent, BitTornado, Azureus, and official Bittorrent, and they all required me to forward ports on my DSL modem and open up my firewall to get any kind of worthwhile speed. Then, I tried uTorrent + Wine. I was shocked. I am now almost saturating my connection both up and down, and best of all I run with my firewall closed and no ports forwarded. Apparently NAT traversal actually works, instead of not working with clients that are supposed to (I believe KTorrent and Azureus). Security and speed, I am sold on uTorrent until they come up with a native Linux app that will work that well.

Anonymous said...

Wow... thank you guys for all this discussion. On Ubuntu/Gnome I tried KTorrent, qBittorrent, BitTornado, Azureus, and official Bittorrent, and they all required me to forward ports on my DSL modem and open up my firewall to get any kind of worthwhile speed. Then, I tried uTorrent + Wine. I was shocked. I am now almost saturating my connection both up and down, and best of all I run with my firewall closed and no ports forwarded. Apparently NAT traversal actually works, instead of not working with clients that are supposed to (I believe KTorrent and Azureus). Security and speed, I am sold on uTorrent until they come up with a native Linux app that will work that well.

Anonymous said...

Cheerz lads, this is a very very helpfull thread. I've been using azureus for a while but is just sux for me. It didnt wanna work fine, always had problems, and if i was scanning a torrent file it took ages and a lot of resources. I'm just installing this ktorrent now, hope it gonna rock.
Thanks a lot =)

Arturo said...

You should also try Deluge, its quite nice and very simple to use, although its not the best client out there, but it does the job. Check it out at http://deluge-torrent.org/

dizzy said...

GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!

Marcelo Magalhaes said...

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the discussion on this blog. I suppose the reference below shows useful information for a torrent client choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_software

Anonymous said...

Deluge Torrent +1

Anonymous said...

I have true 100 Mbit/s connection, but I only get a lousy 10Mb/s limit with the Linux clients, while the windows people here are getting far faster speeds. Is there a Linux client that can match that?

Anonymous said...

Deluge rulez!

Anonymous said...

Cheers for the link.

Anonymous said...

Why dont you use KTorrent??
I tried on many on my KDE PCLinuxOS Minime 2008 installation and I found KTorrent to be the best. Tell me if you have something to say about this

Orangeman said...

I have a guide on most popular P2P technologies at http://sriraminhell.blogspot.com/2007/08/p2p-brief-introduction.html and on Bit Torrent at http://sriraminhell.blogspot.com/2007/08/peer-to-peer-ii-bit-torrent.html . Cheers!!

Anonymous said...

I've used both ktorrent and qbittorrent in KDE. IMO qbittorrent is better. It's by far the nicest torrent client I've tried for Linux.

skaiuoquer said...

Torvalds is cool, but he's far from coherent.

"Do one thing and do it good"?

KDE lacks taste.

It's applications are ok for people with way too much time to waste playing with settings and to-be-used-once-in-a-lifetime-if-ever features, of which the K desktop is plagued.

Transmission rocks.
GNOME does to.

Amarok is cool, but Rythmbox is just as good.

It's my choice. And I came from Amarok.

In fact, I came from KDE.
I got pretty fed up with it.

Let me re-state; KDE lacks taste.

It's applications are cluttered and disorganized, which makes them pretty ugly all-around.

It's nice of them to try to emulate a terminal in GUI, but, I don't fear using my fingertips.

Seriously, "gnome-haters" (usually, kde users); Gnome has come a long way. Try it on, you might like how it fits.

Oh, and .. What's wrong with Azureus is that it's gone proprietary.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Wow!...And I thot all fights were betwn microsux and linooks...heh heh...

neways! my two bits in da pot...

ctorrent RULEZ!!...[grin]

Ultimate torrer for automation...who da hell wants 2 see da torrents while d/loading (but u can if u r so inclined)?...I hv better things 2 do...

Whip up sum shell scripts 2 do da scheduling...queue up few tens of torrents maybe hundreds...get email notification when da job done...

-- The Peaceful DirtySaint

PS. most all clients r gud if u can spend sum time 2 get used to...

Anonymous said...

I have started working with qbittorrent and anything went ok till one day that started giving me many problems with de adsl connection. I don't know why but the adsl connection falls down anytime I start qbittorrent. Althougt that a nice program.

Satya said...

I am using qBittorrent on ubuntu.
Not very satisfied with speed.
As one guy said, he is getting slow speed on linux. I also feel so!

Anonymous said...

I'm using a debian LXDE environment based on gtk+. The new debs required and debs to be updated are listed below for my op.

new(02) update(00) rtorrent
new(02) update(01) gnome-btdownload
new(05) update(00) bittorent-gui
new(06) update(02) bittornado-gui
new(09) update(12) transmission-gtk
new(14) update(01) deluge
new(17) update(01) qbittorent
new(19) update(27) azeurus
new(70) update(22) ktorrent

Anonymous said...

I'm using a debian LXDE environment based on gtk+. The new debs required and debs to be updated are listed below for my op.

new(02) update(00) rtorrent
new(02) update(01) gnome-btdownload
new(05) update(00) bittorent-gui
new(06) update(02) bittornado-gui
new(09) update(12) transmission-gtk
new(14) update(01) deluge
new(17) update(01) qbittorent
new(19) update(27) azeurus
new(70) update(22) ktorrent

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